


Holes

by Avalonia



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Future Fic, Gen, M/M, brief references to abortion, post 5x12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 23:11:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3707075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avalonia/pseuds/Avalonia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“This isn’t my life,” Ian closed his eyes. “How is this my life? I had a life. I had something…” he was reaching again, into that fog, reaching for Yevgeny, reaching for Mickey, reaching beyond them even. Reaching for himself. “How did I just...let go? How did I not fight harder?”</p><p>(inspired by the Phantom Anon'er on Tumblr, and the prompts going around ending with 'Ian wakes up.')</p>
            </blockquote>





	Holes

Ian Gallagher woke up at 9:53 am, Friday, July 15th.

He knew what time it was because his eyes had been fixed on his watch, idly watching the numbers change. He’d always liked that watch. It was black and sturdy, waterproof. Antiquated perhaps, now that everyone had smart phones with timers and alerts and electronic calendars, but he could wear it when he was working out, or doing maneuvers, and it was always there, reliable, solid, and straightforward. Just like him.

No. _Not_ like him.

Ian looked up, blinking, and the kitchen came into view, solidifying all around him. He blinked several more times until it all came into focus.

Liam was sitting across from him, crunching a final bite of toast. His plate was a mess of crumbs and a torn apart, half eaten Eggo, drowning in a deep pool of syrup.

Ian looked down to see his own plate in front of him. It was pristine in comparison, just a few drops and a tiny crumb here and there. He didn’t remember eating.

“All done, Liam?” Debbie came into the kitchen, a hint of impatience in her voice. She sighed as she looked at Liam’s messy plate. “Fine. Whatever,” she picked it up with a jerk and walked over to the sink to scrape the remainders into the garbage disposal.

“Debbie?” Ian asked. His voice sounded rough, more of a croak.

Debbie turned to him, still holding the dripping plate. She looked startled. “Yeah?”

Ian heaved a sigh of relief at the acknowledgement. For a minute there, everything had felt surreal, dreamlike. He hadn’t been sure he was really there, that he could be seen. Her voice was a ribbon tied to his floating balloon.

“You OK?” he asked her. He couldn’t stop staring at her, noticing everything, the studs she had in her ears, her hair growing long again, the white tank top she wore over baggy shorts, legs shoved into flip flops. It felt like he hadn’t seen her in months.

“Why wouldn’t I be -” Debbie began, her earlier impatience laced with defensiveness now.

“I just thought...just because…” Memories were swirling out of the ether now, Fiona’s pale face as she stared at the plastic stick clenched in Debbie’s hand, the screaming, the arguments, the tears, the sounds of doors slamming, over and over. The sobbing that echoed from Debbie’s room on a seemingly endless loop. The harsh smell of antiseptic in the waiting room of the clinic as a nurse walked her away. More tears when she’d come home to lay curled up on her side in bed.

Ian remembered all of this as if he’d seen it play out on a movie screen or he’d watched it on TV, an impartial observer. Not once in the ever increasing flow of memories could he find a moment where he’d reached out to comfort her.

He sucked in a breath through clenched teeth, and tried again. “I just thought, if you needed to talk, you know, about everything…” the words drifted off, drying up as he saw Debbie’s immediate pallor before anger flushed her cheeks crimson.

“I don’t need pity from a headcase like you,” she snapped. “Why don’t you go take another pill and leave me the hell alone, like usual?” With that, she nearly ran from the kitchen. “Liam, get your stuff! You’re going to be late for day camp!” he heard her call from the living room. He heard Liam’s running footsteps in response and then the door slammed.

“Sorry about that.”

Ian nearly jumped as Fiona’s voice broke the quiet and chased away the remaining remnants of fog. His older sister was leaning against the kitchen doorway, a cup held in her hand. “She’s still having a hard time dealing with everything, especially after Derek dumped her. Not that I blame the kid; Debbie really pulled a number on him. I keep hoping she’s learned something from all of this, but if she has, she’s not willing to share it,” Fiona sighed, shaking her head.

She walked forward, pulling up a chair next to him. “You look a little faded. Want some coffee? Half a cup anyway, don’t want you getting the jitters,” she indicated the mug in her hand.

“No,” Ian shook his head. “I just…” her words were echoing in his slowly reviving brain, certain words pulled out of sentences and flashing at him, bright red and merciless. _“...dumped him...really pulled a number on him…”_

The back door swung open then, heralding Lip’s arrival. His brother dropped his bookbag casually on another chair. “What’s up? Save me any coffee?”

Fiona nodded towards the coffee pot and Lip headed in that direction.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” Ian blurted out.

Lip paused, the cup he’d just filled halfway to his lips. “Just had an early morning class today. Figured I’d stay the weekend, maybe we could do something. We talked about this yesterday.”

“We did?” Ian blinked slowly, rubbing his eyes.

“What’s going on with you?” Lip came over to the table, pulling up the chair across from Ian and leaning over.

“I don’t know,” Ian shook his head. “I feel strange. I mean...I _feel_.”

Lip and Fiona looked at each other over Ian’s head before Lip leaned towards Ian again. “You taken your meds today?”

“What?” Ian struggled to focus, even as instant defensiveness jolted him upright, numbed by immediate self-consciousness. The truth was, he couldn’t remember.

Fiona had already jumped up, heading over to the counter. When she came back, she held Ian’s pill divider, showing them both the slot for Friday. It was empty.

“Good,” Lip sagged back in his chair.

Nobody spoke. Ian’s watch marked the time, the seconds racing past.

It would only be another minute, Ian knew, before the two of them chimed in with something innocuous, a little back and forth about the weather lately, mumbled complaints about the community garden next door and not being able to put up the pool this year.

“I’ve been thinking about Mickey,” he blurted out. But this was wrong. He hadn’t been thinking about Mickey. He’d remembered Mickey, of course. Missed him in a dull sort of way, missed his voice, his touch, his comfort. Missed not being hollow. Missed the way that Mickey filled the holes.

But he hadn’t _thought_ about him. He couldn’t remember the last time he had, not actively. And now that’s all he could do suddenly, the memories rushing in the way they had with Debbie earlier, filling up the blank spots, making him wince as each one hit home.

“What brought this on?” Fiona asked after a moment.

“I don’t know,” Ian admitted again. He looked again at the bright kitchen around him, feeling like Dorothy in the Wizard of OZ, opening the door of her black and white world to marvel at the Technicolor landscape just beyond its borders. “I just...I feel like I’ve missed so much. Like I haven’t really been here. I don’t understand what happened.”

“It’s been a tough time,” Fiona finally admitted. “Especially those first couple of months, after you guys broke up. Everything that happened you know, before you were ready to -”

“Don’t,” Ian stopped her there. He didn’t remember, not exactly, but he could feel it all pressing against his brain, ready to be let in.

For now, he only entertained the most opaque of ghosts, a distant recollection of Fiona shouting, Liam sobbing in the background, the shattered plates covering the kitchen floor.

 _“Look at what you did, Ian! Look at it!”_ That was Lip, seizing him by his shirt, pulling him forward, before shoving him into the wall and storming out of the room.

Lying in bed, the blankets over his head. Debbie was the one crying this time… _“Ian, please. You said you weren’t like her. Prove it.”_

Standing in front of the entrance to the clinic, pushing Fiona’s hands off of him. _“Stop trying to take care of me. I’m going in alone. I’m doing this by myself.”_

“It was better,” he mumbled, more to himself. “That he didn’t have to see all that. I put him through enough already. That’s what I was trying to tell him. I didn’t want him to fix me. It was up to me to figure it all out, not on him to do it for me,” he looked desperately at Fiona and Lip, wanting them to be Mickey’s proxy, to tell him they understood in place of the man who wasn’t there to say it.

“It wasn’t just me, was it?” he demanded of them. “Mickey really used to look at me like that. Like I scared him. Like he needed to look after me. That’s not what a relationship is about. One person isn’t supposed to be in charge, do all of the work…” he stopped again, more ghosts speaking in the background.

_“...we take care of each other…”_

“I gotta talk to him,” Ian ran a hand through his hair, forgetting again that it he’d finally given in and cut it. He missed the look Fiona and Lip exchanged at that as he pawed at his scalp fretfully. “Do you think he’d talk to me?”

The alarm that lit both Lip and Fiona’s eyes at that had Ian leaning forward, a pit filling his stomach. “What?” he demanded.

“Ian,” Fiona said, her voice careful. “Have you been by the Milkovich house lately?”

“No - “ Ian broke off at the sheer pity on Fiona’s face. “No,” he shook his head even as acknowledgement gnawed at the edges of his brain. “I don’t - I gotta go.” he jumped up from the chair, ignoring his sister calling him back, and ran down the back steps.

 

“Ian, wait up!”

Ian didn’t want to slow down, didn’t want to turn around, but the anxiety bordering on anger in Lip’s voice forced him to at least slow down.

“Don’t do this to yourself,” Lip hurried his steps to keep up with Ian’s long strides. “Ian, please. Not again.”

“Why?” Ian demanded, whipping around to face his brother. “What are you not telling me?” he was nearly running now, Lip having to do a fast jog to keep up. They rounded the corner.

Ian froze when the house came into view, stopping in his tracks.

The noise of the busy street, the cars passing, children laughing, faded away. Ian didn’t have to go any further to have the tale told, but after a frozen moment, he did so anyway.

Boards covered the windows, and another, longer one, blocked the front door. There was yellow tape criss-crossed over it and for a heart-pounding moment, Ian thought it was crime scene tape. But no, it was just ordinary caution tape, emphasized with a pink notice stapled to the plywood. Ian forced himself to push open the rusty gate, wincing as it croaked wearily, as if it hadn’t been opened in years and they were expecting too much of it.

He jogged up the steps, ignoring that Lip was right behind him, to read the notice on the door.

**This property has been condemned by the City of Chicago. All trespassers are subject to criminal prosecution.**

Numbly, Ian turned back to Lip. “How long?” he whispered.

Lip shrugged, his casual motion belied by the slight tremble in his hands before he dug into his pockets, ostensibly to retrieve his pack of smokes. “A while, man. Look, I thought you knew. I just figured you didn’t...you know…”

“Care,” Ian spoke through numb lips. After a minute he accepted the cigarette that Lip offered. Turning away from the finality of that weathered notice on the door, he looked down into the yard again, realizing that most of the furniture and piles of trash that littered the yard had come from inside the house, thrown uncaringly onto the lawn to be destroyed by the elements. A broken bedframe, piles of stained clothing, broken crockery, pieces of the dishes he remembered eating off of.

There was the easy-chair that he’d sat in many a late night, rocking Yevgeny to sleep and sharing cigarettes with Svetlana. It was thrown onto its back, stuffing spilling out of its torn arms, mildew visibly dotting the stained back. Like it really was a piece of nothing, like it had never been part of anything.

Like none of it had ever happened at all.

“What happened?” Ian tore his eyes away from the ravaged remnants to freeze Lip in his frantic stare. “Where did they all go?”

Lip raised his shoulders helplessly. “I don’t know, Ian. I -”

He was cut off as Ian shoved past him, running down the steps, through the rusted gate and towards the yard of the house next door, where a man in shorts and a button up polo shirt was watering the lawn. One of the newcomers, it was clear...the house behind him sparkled with new paint and windows, and the shiny Mazda in the drive screamed out the fact that this was not the same neighborhood it had been months ago.

“Hey you!” Ian barked as the man raised his head, looking confused and wary.

“Ian, wait -” Lip had caught up, reaching for Ian’s arm.

Ian shook him off impatiently.

“Hey,” he repeated again, speaking still to the neighbor. He pointed back at the house behind him without looking. “What happened here?”

The man still looked leery, but after a moment he glanced over at the Milkovich house and shrugged. “A lot of these hovels have been condemned,” he snorted. “Good riddance. Not like you can really fix a dump like that up; it was probably a meth lab or something.”

“It was not a meth lab!” Ian exploded, jumping forward, but Lip held fast this time, and Ian was forced to temper himself. “People lived there! _I_ lived here!”

“Hey,” the man dropped his hose and backed away. “Settle down, son, I didn’t mean it personally.”

“Like hell you didn’t -!” Ian started forward again and Lip yanked him back.

“Back the fuck off!” he hissed frantically in his brother’s direction before he turned back to the neighbor, who was looking like he was ready to bolt into his freshly redone home and dial 911. Lip plastered on a falsely apologetic smile. “Look, as you can see this is kind of a shock for my brother here. Anything else you could tell us would really help. Any idea where they went?”

The man eyed them suspiciously for a moment before he shook his head. “Nope. They were here one day and gone the next. Split in the middle of the night, I think. Few weeks later another guy showed up, after the city had already nailed the door closed, and had a complete meltdown when he saw it like this. Attacked poor Wally over there,” he nodded to a house across the street, “when Wally told him it was condemned. Had to call the cops. Turns out the guy was fresh out of jail. They hauled him right back in.”

“Terry,” Ian whispered to himself.

“Thanks, man,” Lip was telling the neighbor. The man gave a curt nod and disappeared inside his house.

“He talked about them... _us_...like we were dogs, Lip,” Ian spoke over the reproach he saw already forming on his brother’s lips. “It wasn’t a dump. It’s not a hovel. It was a home. People lived their life there.”

“I know, Ian,” Lip’s words were too careful, patronizing.

“It was my life too,” he repeated.

And then he was running. Down the street, around the corner, back towards his own house.

“Ian, wait!” he heard Lip yell behind him.

But he couldn’t stop. His feet smacked the sidewalk, long legs pumping, and he was gasping for air already...he was still so out of shape, trapped in this alien body that didn’t move or breathe or think like it should anymore.

He could hear Lip panting, several feet behind him, a breathy noise coming from his brother every couple of minutes that might have been a plea or a curse and he still couldn’t stop. He raced past his own home, jerking the gate open to the house next door, charging up the steps. Pounding on the door.

“Svetlana!”

“Ian...what the fuck…” Gasping for air, Lip climbed the porch to stand behind him. “Come on, you know she’s not - “

The door was yanked open, and V was staring out at them, face bewildered.

“Ian?”

“Where’s Svetlana?” Ian was half a second from pushing her out of his way. “I need to talk to her.”

V looked stunned at this before she exchanged a long look with Lip and her expression melted into understanding and worse, pity. “Honey, Svetlana hasn’t been here in a long time.”

“That’s not true!” Ian banged his fist into the doorway, making both V and Lip jump. “I saw her, remember? You were there! You two were walking, you had the strollers, and the babies, and I was coming the other way. She let me hold Yevgeny. For the first time since…” he broke off. “Don’t you remember? It happened! Don’t tell me it didn’t happen! Don’t tell me I just imagined - “ his voice cracked then.

“No, Ian, you didn’t imagine it,” V’s voice was deliberately soft now. She put a hand on his arm. “That’s exactly how it happened. But baby, that was months ago. Don’t you remember?”

“No,” Ian shook his head. “I don’t believe you.” And then he was pushing past her, her startled exclamation and Lip’s sudden oath bouncing off his eardrums without registering.

He ran into the living room. “Svetlana? Yevgeny?”

There was nothing, except the sound of the TV, smiling Botox’d faces with dead eyes staring back at him from the screen.

“Ian, would you chill; I swear to you she is not fucking here!” Lip made a grab for him, but Ian was off again, bounding towards the spiral staircase and taking the steps two at a time. He raced straight for the second bedroom, where Svetlana had been sleeping on a cot between the cribs.

“Ian, don’t!“ V’s protest seemed like it was coming from far away, easy to ignore, as Ian threw open the door. It crashed into the other wall, startling awake the two baby girls who’d been soundly sleeping, each in their own crib. They sat up simultaneously and immediately began to wail.

The sound of their cries was like a cold splash of reality, right in the face. Ian blinked rapidly, seeing now that there was no cot in between the cribs any more. Nor were Svetlana’s bags with her few possessions still stacked against the door, the way he remembered seeing it...when? He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything anymore.

Nothing belonging to Yevgeny was in sight either. Not his stroller, his clothes...there were two of every baby item in the room, pink or yellow doubled. Nothing of the boy that once was among them.

The energy drained out of Ian like the water being wrung out of a used dish cloth. He sagged against the doorway, noticing now that V was rushing back and forth between cribs, speaking soothingly to her weeping children.

“I didn’t mean to,” he muttered. “Sorry, V.”

V looked up at him. “It’s alright,” she whispered, tapping a finger against her lips. Ian saw that she’d gotten the girls to lie down again. The one that she stood over still had her eyes open, whimpering lightly until V teased the baby’s tiny eyelids closed with a light trace of her finger.

“Come on,” V gestured to him to precede her out of the room. Ian turned, his head down, and nearly smacked into Lip, who was waiting right outside the doorway. His brother looked pale, worried.

“Downstairs, both of you,” V pointed at the staircase, speaking normally as she closed the bedroom door behind her. “Have a seat and I’ll make some tea.”

She followed closely behind them, making sure Ian took a seat at the table before she opened cupboards, supposedly to look for the tea, but really to talk to Lip in hushed tones.

“Is he off his meds?” Ian heard her stage whisper.

“No,” Lip spoke normally, and his glance at his younger brother was deliberate. Ian felt heartened by this small gesture. He wasn’t being excluded, or talked about behind his back. “He’s still taking them. Got his dose a few weeks back though; I think maybe that’s what brought this on.”

“No,” Ian started to protest, then stopped. “Yeah. Maybe. But I think they’re…” he hated the way his words tripped over each other sometimes now, the way they couldn’t seem to form an orderly line any more and march out of his mouth the way they used to. “I think they’re working. I feel clearer now. Like I’ve just woken up.”

“Well, maybe that’s good,” Lip took a seat next to Ian, trying to smile heartily,but it didn’t cover up the doubt on his face.

“Here,” V brought two steaming mugs to the table. “I’m not sure what kind this is. I don’t actually drink this shit. Kev brought it home when he was on that kick about me not drinking caffeine while I was breastfeeding, the dumb fuck,” she spoke the last words fondly, smiling. “I’m going to call Fiona,” she added as Ian took a sip of the tea from the mug, gagging slightly when he realized how hot it still was. It burned a scalding path down his throat.

“You feel better now?” Lip asked him after a minute of watching Ian carefully. His own mug sat untouched next to him, still steaming lazily.

The front door flew open at that moment, and Fiona was rushing in, face sagging with relief when she saw Ian sitting down at the table,. “Thank fuck!” she exclaimed as she rushed across the room. She was in front of Ian a second later, kneeling down so that she could look him in the eye. He saw she was barefoot and this small detail touched him, that she hadn’t bothered to find shoes, had just run to his side. “Are you OK?” she was asking now.

Ian didn’t know what to say to that, but thankfully, Lip took over. “He saw the house.”

“Oh,” Fiona exhaled before her gaze fixed on Ian again. “I’m so sorry. I thought you realized... I guess we all just assumed that you’d made your peace with it. That you’d moved on.”

“That I didn’t care,” Ian couldn’t mask the bitterness. The words themselves tasted sour. He took another drink of his cooling tea and discovered it tasted off too, as if his bitterness had flavored it somehow.

“No, Ian!” Fiona stood up, taking the chair across from Ian, followed by V who scooted in next to her. “I never thought that you didn’t care. But you’ve had so much going on lately. Everything’s changed for you.”

“How long?” Ian’s voice had fallen into a whisper. He turned back to V. “How long has Svetlana been gone?”

He saw the nervous look she exchanged with Fiona and Lip before seeming to make up her mind to answer. “At least two months now. Maybe three.”

“Where did she go?” Ian kept his voice a near whisper, but he couldn’t quite hide the edge of desperation.

“I’m not sure,” V’s voice was back to being careful. “She worked things out with Mickey, so she didn’t need a place to stay any more.”

Ian’s head shot up. “So she is with him!” The growing excitement made his voice louder. “Where did they go?”

Fiona put her hand over his and squeezed. Lost in his blossoming hope, Ian didn’t realize until V shook her head again that Fiona was preparing him for bad news.

“I honestly don’t know, Ian. I wish I could tell you.”

“But…” Ian stared at all three of them, back and forth, searching their expressions for some indication that they were holding out on him. There was none. There was only concern. And pity. He hated it. He wanted to tear their sympathetic faces off their skulls, poke out their sorrowful eyes.

He took a breath, then another. A big sip of rancid tea, and swallowed hard. Breathed again.

“Didn’t she say goodbye to me?” he struggled to sift through time, but it was like reaching into a deep, impenetrable fog, feeling around and hoping to feel someone reaching back. “Wouldn’t she do that? Bring Yevgeny so I could see him one last time?”

“Maybe,” Fiona and Lip looked at each other again. “We haven’t been around every minute of every day. But if she did, you never said anything to us about it.”

Ian nodded slowly, hoping his own face didn’t show how his fading hopes burned like drizzled acid. “What about…” he had to force it out, face the burn as the words left his lips. “... _him_? Did he say goodbye?”

More looks across the table from his siblings, and Ian already had his answer. They weren’t unsure of this one.

“No,” Fiona was holding onto him like they were on the deck of a ship in tumoultous waters, and she was afraid he might jump overboard. “You haven’t talked to him since you broke up.”

“How long ago was that?” Ian’s mouth was cotton dry again. He swallowed the rest of his tea and tried not to grimace at the taste. It was like heated tears.

“About six months ago,” Lip scratched his nose.

“This isn’t my life,” Ian closed his eyes. “How is this my life? I _had_ a life. I had something…” he was reaching again, into that fog, reaching for Yevgeny, reaching for Mickey, reaching beyond them even. Reaching for himself. “How did I just...let go? How did I not fight harder?”

“Hey now,” Fiona’s grip on his hand tightened. “I don’t ever want to hear you say that again. You’ve been fighting every single day. You’ve been fighting for _you_. And you had to do that first. I know you don’t want to hear that, but it’s the truth.”

“But they must think...Svetlana and Yevgeny and...Mickey,” God, it hurt to say his name. Like getting on his knees to pray, whispering words into the sky, already knowing they’d only dissipate into nothingness. “...she was right next door. He was two blocks away. And I didn’t even realize they left. They must have thought that I didn’t - “

“I don’t believe that. Not for a second,” Fiona shook her head. “Ian, Mickey saw what you were going through before. He knows, OK?”

“You don’t know that, though. He’s gone,” Ian shook his head. “I slept for a hundred years, and everything changed.”

There was silence at that. Ian looked at the three solemn faces watching him carefully. “It’s OK,” he told them. “I’m sorry I scared you. I’m going to be alright,” he laughed suddenly, just a ghost of a chuckle. “I gotta be. After all of this, I fucking _have_ to be. Otherwise, there was just no point, not to any of it.”

He could feel their relief, but Ian didn’t look up to see it reflected in their expressions. He kept his head down, eyes on the table, tracing the damp ring his mug had left on the formica surface.

“Do you think...if I find him again...do you think there’s anything left?”

He heard the deep intake of breath at that. He still didn’t look up. A chair scooted back. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw V’s boots move past him, towards the counter. A second later, he heard the water running in the sink.

“Anything is possible,” Fiona spoke hesitantly after a moment. “He loved you. We all know that.”

“I loved him too,” Ian looked up.

“Yeah,” Fiona blinked the tears out of her eyes. “I know,” she smiled shakily.

“Come on,” Lip stood up from the table, then held out his hand to Ian. “Let’s go home.”

“K’ “, Ian took his brother’s hand and let himself sag into Lip’s strong grip. Let it pull him up.

“Sorry again, V,” Ian said. She was standing with her back to him, letting the water still run into the empty sink.

V turned around to face him and Ian was startled, then pierced deeply, to see that she had been crying.

“It’s OK,” she said again, and then she crossed the room to him, putting her hands on his cheeks and looking him in the eyes. “I am so proud of you, Ian. We all are. No matter what. So fucking proud.”

“Thanks,” he mumbled, but he smiled, and it was genuine. Tentative, but real.

Lip slung his arm around Ian’s back as they followed Fiona through the backyard to their own house. “Look, about Mickey…” Lip hesitated.

Ian knew what he was going to say. That Mickey shouldn’t be his priority right now. That Ian still had a long way to go.

And Ian didn’t need to hear it. He already knew it was true. He wasn’t ready. He was just climbing to his feet again, still punchdrunk, after an excruciatingly long boxing match with his own head. The boy he’d been was perhaps still there, but forever changed. The man he was going to become was still a stranger. And Mickey deserved more than that, more than pieces of a wreck barely knit back together. He deserved to not have to fill up the holes, to patch Ian together anymore than he already had.

Mickey deserved to be chosen by someone strong enough to fill his own holes.

“I got this,” Ian told his brother as they ascended the back steps of their family home together.

Lip dropped his arm, equal parts protective and restraining, from Ian’s back. “I know you do.” They were back in the kitchen, where it had all begun. Full circle.

Fiona raised her eyebrows at Lip and Ian saw the barely imperceptible nod towards the living room. Lip clapped Ian on the shoulder and followed her away, leaving Ian alone.

Ian was grateful for that small, deliberate gift, the quiet they’d granted him, and with it the trust that he could work through this on his own. Come to his own conclusions. Make a choice.

He already knew what he’d choose. For now, it was himself. Here. Today. It was one step, then another. It was to live in the now, eyes wide open.

But someday, he’d look.

And he’d find him. Mickey was cagey enough to not leave much of a trail, but Ian knew him. Knew enough to know that Mickey wouldn’t make it easy, but he’d leave an opening. A trail of breadcrumbs for Ian to follow. A door not quite shut.

What would happen then, he didn’t know. Mickey was living in the now too. His own life was happening. There was no certainty that Ian had a place in it anymore.

He’d cross that bridge when he came to it. Deal with it no matter how it shook down.

Ian Gallagher was awake.

  


**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading. i'm sorry to hop on the sadfic train but 5x12 gave me a lot of feelings, most of them homicidal. And then there's this. feedback always appreciated! 
> 
> i can be found at http://avalonia320.tumblr.com/


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